


Momentia Caerulea

by Fazikku



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Cayde needs a goddamn hug and lots of kisses, Established Relationship, Hidden Depths, M/M, bound inside jokes between authors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 00:45:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11116362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fazikku/pseuds/Fazikku
Summary: A collection of (mostly stupidly domestic) drabbles and oneshots with Zavala and Cayde. Some are connected, some are not.





	Momentia Caerulea

**Author's Note:**

> "Petrichor": n. the pleasant earthly scent after rainfall.

Stray raindrops softly tap Zavala’s face as his crestfallen eyes gaze into the dense, grey fog spread over the Last City. He takes in everything at once, and nothing at all. Cradled loosely on his bed in a lazy sitting position with the window slid open, he rests his head against the wall, nearly leaning it outside the window. Raindrops make it past his head and some dot the bed cover, but he is too sunken in menial thoughts to care, or as much as notice. Cool, fresh draft washes over him and makes his eyelids flutter in defense. Monsoon season is on its way, and this little summer shower is a mere prelude for the rainstorms ahead.

Nonetheless, Zavala wants to appreciate this little moment of peace, which unfortunately will last exactly forty-four minutes more before his shift at the Vanguard Hall begins. A night shift with not much traffic, he recalls. He’s thankful for that. A minor headache is pulsing on the right side of his head, flowing in and out of existence, enough to cut Zavala out of his trance and make him lift a hand to press two fingers against his temple and slowly rub against it. He momentarily closes his eyes, feeling them watering up and stinging from the dryness caused by ogling against the wind for too long without blinking. Moving his head makes him aware of a tedious kink in his neck and the hand pressing against the side of his head finds a new place to relieve pain accompanied by a barely audible wince from the Commander. A finger wipes away a tear from the corner of his eye as it goes. The draft is not cold, so perhaps he’s remained unmoving a tad too long.

A distant banging in the back of Zavala’s head keeps reminding him he has not yet changed to his work attire that is his usual armor, not even the lightweight battle suit he wears under the hard, white layers. He’s clad in a simple grey t-shirt and a pair of matching sweatpants a few shades darker; not much thought goes into what he wears when nobody’s there to look. A small sigh involuntarily escapes Zavala’s lips as his mind makes an effort to get him up from his slouch, but the prompt never reaches the outsides of his brain. Frowning, he again leans his head back against the wall and turns it enough to be able to look outside. Dropping his hand down from his neck, he can feel the damp dots on the bed cover, yet he does not care. It’s water. Water dries up.

Zavala lingers, wants to stay longer. Let me take this evening, he begs no one.

He lets his eyes fall shut and heaves out a deep breath. He listens; the rhythm of the rain pelting against the window is uneven but soothing. Zavala subconsciously tries to make a connection between the intensity of drops drumming against the glass and the seeding headache, but soon realizes it makes absolutely no sense. He focuses on the feeling of gentle wind on his face and the fresh smell of rain. A wonderful little thing, that.

The Commander notes he would have the time to take a quick shower before his shift starts.

A sudden set of familiar knocks sound from the door, breaking his attempted last-minute relaxation and canceling his showering plans. He could be annoyed - but doesn’t find the strength or, strangely, the heart for it - knowing who it is. Nevertheless, he can’t help but let out a short, silent groan. The exo better have something of importance to discuss; they share the same shift tonight and have plenty of time to converse throughout the nightly hours. When no Guardians are around, of course.

“It’s open,” he calls loudly enough for the visitor to hear. Anyone with enough social skills to interpret social and auditory cues would have the decency to peek in first and make sure Zavala is in the mood for receiving guests, but he knows this wish is probably far-fetched. Hunters have never proven themselves to be considerate of personal spaces, as if they are not a handful enough without this attribute.

Surely enough, he is right. The door basically flies open with one swift fling and a pair of bright, aquamarine marbles shine from under a familiar, worn hood.

“Heeey there, handsome! Miss me?”

No. Or, maybe.

… yeah.

Cayde’s voice is as piercing as ever as he steps into the private quarters of the awoken and inadvertently nearly slams the door shut after himself. He’s carrying a small plastic bag which immediately gains Zavala’s suspicions.

“Hello, Cayde,” comes the distinctly begrudging reply as Zavala opens his eyes and turns his head enough to watch the hunter strut across the room over to the bed like he owns the place. Cayde tosses the bag at Zavala's general direction who's made to catch it before it hits him. The exo makes himself comfortable enough to sit on the bed and concentrates his gaze on Zavala, optics flickering at the skin-tight t-shirt which definitely does not go unnoticed by the wearer. Had Cayde still possessed a human face, the grin across it would be absolutely unabashed.

“Not bad.”

Zavala shoots a glare at the exo and can feel the tips of his ears flare up, a dangerous little thing. The hunter is quick to take advantage of bodily cues and he has found it to be particularly funny to pull off with Zavala, much to the awoken’s chagrin. Zavala lets out a short, contemplating noise and tries to focus on the bag he just caught. Working on the knot it’s been sealed with, he instinctively sits up a bit more from the slump he had reduced to.

“What’s this?”

Cayde lifts a leg to rest an ankle on the other leg’s knee.

“Lunch, before work.”

Zavala lifts his eyes from the bag to give Cayde a dubious yet a little amused glance.

“It’s past five.”

The exo shrugs as much as he can with his hands against the bed supporting his backwards lean. The plates on his face imitating brows lift themselves for a moment.

“It can be dinner, whatever you like.”

Zavala tries to fight the little tug on the corner of his mouth but loses quickly. He realizes it’s another tiny victory for Cayde and kicks himself for that, trying to hide his mirth by concentrating on the tightly sealed bag. He does genuinely appreciate the gesture of Cayde thinking about him in this way, though. Sometimes, after bickering with the hunter and convincing himself for the thousandth time that he is positively unable to care about anyone but himself, somehow he always manages to prove Zavala wrong. He’s not sure if it’s intentional; does he do the certain little things with metaphorical teeth grit just to apologize to Zavala or do they come naturally. Cayde has proven to be the epitome of stubbornness times over, especially lethal against the titan’s own adamant demeanor, but over the years, Zavala has come to grant some hard-earned understanding for Cayde’s ways. Partly because he has no choice, given that they both work in the same limited space every day and must make dire decisions with each other and share strategic intelligence, but there is something else to it than just that. The Commander is not talented in processing these kinds of thoughts and is not inspired to learn either, but is content in merely accepting their existence. For now.

Realizing his momentary lapse into overthinking, Zavala shakes the thoughts away and hauls his gaze from the bag and back to Cayde. The exo’s face is streaked with rainwater, droplets beading into smaller proportions. His leathers are partially drenched.

“You’re soaking the bed.”

Cayde looks at the spot Zavala sits at.

“So is the rain.”

That makes Zavala lower his attention enough to finally notice that the bed cover no longer has mere little damp spots but enough moistness it could be squeezed off of it with enough strength. Zavala lets out a disapproving grunt at the realization and bends himself enough to slide the window shut and lock it. He gets up and grabs the cover, pulling it with him as much as he can before it stops at Cayde’s weight.

“Off.”

Cayde complains with a bored whine but rolls off the bed, swinging himself upright at the last moment. He settles a shoulder against the wall in line with the bed, crosses his legs and gazes outside. There is a silent moment, accompanied only by subtle fabric shuffling and raindrops continuing their concerto against the glass. Cayde thinks it is way too quiet.

“What does it smell like?”

Zavala’s head makes a subconscious jerk in Cayde’s direction as he folds and settles the bed cover over the back of a single chair to dry up and then turns towards the hunter.

“What?”

“The rain. Remind me.”

The titan’s brow momentarily lifts before immediately returning to its natural, slightly furrowed state. Zavala studies the side of Cayde’s face he can see; a rare yet somewhat familiar mood exudes from him, and the Commander decides they’re both quite understanding of each other today. He’s not complaining. Zavala’s eyes drift down along the exo’s body and over the floor, albeit they’re not concentrated on any specific spot. The brief silence makes another appearance.

“Vital.”

Cayde knows what rain smells like. It smells like…

“Alive.”

… like wilderness. Fresh kills. The somersault your stomach makes just before a leap from the top verge of a derelict colony ship in the Cosmodrome. Sex late at evening in a remote meadow of lush grass untouched by gallons of petrol leaked from Golden Age vehicles and Fallen blood. Verdant.

Freedom. Cayde wants to grin and shake his head at the ironic implications of that regarding his current position and the inescapable nature of every good hunter, but that is it. Freedom is what rain smells like.

Cayde gives a slow, absent-minded nod and keeps his optics a moment longer among the grey haze outside. He usually is not much of a god-curser but by the Traveler, let him be out there.

Zavala lets the other Vanguard have his moment and goes back to the plastic bag. He manages to untie the knot and spreads the thing open, the contents not quite impressing him.

“Instant ramen..?” he inquires with even more disbelief and amusement in his words than a moment ago when he learned he will be eating lunch during early evening. Cayde does not reply and Zavala is left waiting for a snarky remark. He looks back at the exo and sees him still staring outside.

“Cayde.”

Bemusedly, Cayde slowly turns his face towards Zavala, brow plates lifting themselves and bright exo eyes casting a wide, confused stare at the titan.

“Instant ramen?” Zavala repeats.

Cayde looks down at the bag, his synthetic brain finally registering the words as a question.

“Yeah. You don’t sound excited. Wrong flavor?”

Zavala’s lips very nearly pull into another little smirk and he does a visible job of trying to hide it. The not-quite offended undertone in Cayde’s reply is amusing. It is a food item, for Traveler’s sake.

“No, no. It’s just… I don’t exactly come with a stove.”

Cayde makes a sharp turn with his upper torso and points an assertive finger at an object of interest on a small desk next to the chair tasked with the drying of the bed cover.

“But you do come with an electric kettle.”

Zavala follows the finger’s direction to the said item and lets out an insightful hum. Cayde does take note on an uncomfortable lot of little things. Then again, those are the same things that tend to pick the Commander up when work gets overwhelming and he needs something to take off the edge. Should he be worried or grateful about Cayde’s attentiveness, he cannot decide.

The hunter again would smirk if he could and regretfully crosses his arms, pokes out a hip and cocks his head as his stare follows Zavala into the cramped bathroom the Commander considers his only source of water in his private quarters. He fills the kettle with water straight from the sink’s tap and brings it back to its stand and turns it on. He mostly uses the apparatus for boiling water for tea, something very noticeable by the telltale packs of tea bags piled up right behind the stand. To his delight, he’s had more time for evening tea lately due to an hour or two of extra spare time granted by a row of successes in the field. He once almost asked Cayde if he’d like to join him, but held back after realizing tea does not serve the exo much purpose. He’s regretted it ever since, but hasn’t ventured to try again.

Cayde turns his head back to look outside.

“Half an hour, better pick it up.”

Zavala knows but currently finds it more appealing to join Cayde in his birdwatching. He’s not sure what he sees out there, but perhaps one does not need to be looking at something in particular to get the big picture.

The commander recalls how Cayde constantly complains about needing to be out there in the wilds and how he sometimes sneaks to prohibited parts of the Tower just to be alone somewhere high, with no walls around him and where he can feel the wind and see as far as his optics allow vision to travel. Zavala knows as he was brought along once, after an enduring while of arguing about protocols and rules and what they actually mean. The view was breathtaking, and so was Cayde, with all that he is. Rare moments such as that give Zavala a private, intimate look at an element in the hunter that he likes to think is for his eyes only. For all his childish games, jokes and snarking, Cayde carries an insurmountable burden on his shoulders and sometimes bits of it break away, crumble when the correct, precise spots are chipped at. There is something unforgettably raw inside him, spewing out like blood from a slit wrist when untied. On the roof with no walls, Cayde would stand tall, spread his arms wide, grasp at anything that is not there and scream with no shame. It is so loud that his vocal processor has trouble cooperating with him and Zavala could hear crackling under the flanging cry. Cayde keeps going and going and only stops when the crackling is prominent to have mercy on his body, or perhaps he still has a faint memory of what it feels like to run out of breath. All the same, the scream is followed by an irregular series of shorter wails reminiscent of crying. All Zavala ever does is stand and watch with silent reckoning and respect for a fellow leader, an accomplice, a friend.

A paramour.

The awoken has not seen him be like that with anyone else, but alas, he is not aware of every connection Cayde has and neither is he aware of the secrets moving among them. But Zavala knows that, currently, he is the only subject of the hunter’s ardor. To be just, the affection has grown on him, and it grows back over towards the exo. A disgusting metaphor of rosy vines flashes across Zavala’s mind.

They would later descend back to permissible parts of the Tower and Cayde would dress himself in his usual façade. And Zavala would be mostly disapproving of his deeds, as per usual.

“There will be a day,” Zavala finds himself muttering thinly. Cayde does not reel his gaze back at him, but allows a nod for the statement. Of course there will be. He _will_ get back in the wilds. He realizes it’s probably terrible to think about it, but he knows the peace molded with blood, sweat and tears will not last forever. Hell, they’ve slayed enemies a many, but there is something bigger out there. Lurking. Waiting for the right moment.

The kettle whistles the immediate moment Cayde thinks of it and causes him to jerk awake from his thoughts, breaking his contact with the outside world far out there. He hazily follows Zavala with his peripheral vision as he peels open the ramen pack, fingers off the condiment bags and carefully pours water into the small foam bowl and mixes the spices in. Cayde lets out a little bemused sigh and turns to have his back against the wall and window, bright eyes scouting over Zavala. He does not look half bad in home attire, but surely it pales if juxtaposed with his usual armor. The titan leaves the noodles to soak and walks back to his companion, allowing slight confusion over the browsing.

“What?”

He can tell Cayde narrowing his eyes and smirking.

“Free tonight?” the exo inquires slyly.

“You know I’m not.”

Cayde’s mouth opens slightly accompanied by a chuckle and the still-perspiring face inches closer to Zavala’s. A couple of fingers playfully tap their way up along the Commander’s left arm.

“After that?”

“Sleep.”

The Hunter Vanguard lets out a dramatic, desperate groan as he slumps against the wall. It is Zavala’s turn to smirk and he uses the moment to his advantage to press their lower bodies together, catching Cayde’s attention anew.

“… how about morning sex?”

Cayde’s optics brighten for the smallest moment before he lets out a long, drawn-out sound like he’s having an epiphany. A hand sneaks its way up against Zavala’s chest, a single finger tracing a nondescript pattern against the shirt.

“Hell yeah.”

Cayde leans in to press his cold-against-skin mouth to Zavala’s neck, giving a nibble or two. The Commander’s eyes close momentarily and there’s a sharp inhale whilst hands find their places on leather-clad biceps. Cayde smells like hide, and rain. Vital.

Alive.


End file.
